Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communication systems, and more particularly to a base station initiated control mechanism for supporting a supplemental link.
Description of Related Art
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, space, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
By way of example, a wireless multiple-access communication system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, otherwise known as user equipments (UEs). A base station may communicate with UEs on downlink channels (e.g., for transmissions from a base station to a UE) and uplink channels (e.g., for transmissions from a UE to a base station).
Various communication systems may use different frequency bands depending on the particular needs of the system. For example, a millimeter wave frequency band (which may be between 20 to 300 GHz) may be used where a large concentration of UEs are relatively close to one another and/or where a relatively large amount of data is to be transferred from a base station to one or more UEs, or vice versa. Millimeter wavelength signals, however, frequently experience high path loss, and as a result, directional beam forming techniques may be used for uplink (UL) and/or downlink (DL) transmissions between a base station and a UE using millimeter wavelength frequencies. The reliance on directional beams, however, may make millimeter wave communications less reliable and more resource-intensive to set up than other radio access technologies (RATs). For example, Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology may be more reliable and less resource-intensive to set up, but may have a smaller overall throughput than a millimeter wave-based RAT.